Family Ties
by Lushcoltrane
Summary: The girls find some interesting characters in their family trees. "Victorious" and its characters are the property of Schneider's Bakery and Nickelodeon. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author.


**Family Ties**

by

John O'Connor

"Your assignment is to look back into your family history. See how they may or may not have been involved in major historical events, or how history affected them. You may not find anything special but you may find something incredible. Use whatever tools you can - from family histories to books to genealogical sites on line. Your report is due the week before the semester finals.

"Oh, as I said, this will account for twenty-five percent of your grade."

"Mr. Grimes?"

"Yes, Cat?" The history teacher braced himself. Cat Valentine often had odd stories or even odder questions. Fortunately, this was one of the rare times she asked something a bit more normal.

"What if we don't find anything?"

"Just do your best. I'm not going to grade on content or composition. Just on the effort. Which means I want a bibliography - regardless of whether your family has any significant history or not, I want proof that you did the research. List the newspapers, documents, websites and even family lore."

Just before the bell rang, one of the other students asked, "Which side of the family?"

Grimes said, "Both sides back to your great-grandparents at least. After that, if you find something significant, follow that line. If not, go back further, presuming you can find information."

Jade asked, "How far back?"

"If you can follow the family tree back enough, let's say the Revolutionary War period - the 1770s. Any more questions?"

The bell rang at that moment, calling a halt to the class and any further questions.

* * *

Tori went up to Jade and asked, "You wanna hit the library and check the internet?"

"Nah, not yet. I'm gonna ask the old man first. I remember him telling me stories when I was a kid about an ancestor of mine back in the mid-1800s. But we can go make out in the stacks?"

Tori smiled and nodded. "Okay."

Jade smiled at her girlfriend and said, "Anyway, the web connection here sucks. I get better access at home."

"And they block porn sites," Tori teased.

"That too."

* * *

Unlike a lot of their classmates who blew off the assignment to focus on their artistic pursuits, Tori, Jade and Cat started their research. Jade because she was intrigued by stories she remembered hearing. Tori because she loved history and wanted to see what her family had done or been involved with. And Cat was starting because she wanted to see if Valentine's Day was really her family's day. Silently, Jade and Tori agreed not to disillusion their ditzy friend. Cat would discover the truth soon enough.

The three of them got together to compare notes several times a week - beyond the times they just hung out together with the others in their gang.

The Vega family, Tori discovered, wasn't from Puerto Rico. At least not originally. Her grandfather had been born in Cuba and, with his parents, fled the island when Castro overthrew Batista. They settled in Puerto Rico. Federico Vega moved to Miami when he came of age in the early 1960s and met a girl from New York, who was there on Spring Break, and she became Tori's grandmother - Sylvia Vega. Their son, David Vega, moved to Los Angeles to become an actor but ended up a respected member of the LAPD.

"My family got displaced by Castro!" Tori declared proudly. As with most teenagers, she was more impressed by the story than the actual effect such an event had on the people involved.

"Yeah, well..." Jade really had nothing to say. Her father had been in England working on a deal for the past month. He flew out just before the semester began so she hadn't been able to check any of the stories he told her when she was little.

Cat shrugged and said, "I don't think Valentine's Day is named for my family..."

"No chiz!" Jade exclaimed, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

"But my great-grandfather was one of those Monuments Men."

"Really?" Tori asked, excited by Cat's discovery.

"Yeah, he worked on Mount Rushmore..."

Jade just groaned and shook her head while Tori said, "Cat, that's not what the Monuments Men did."

"Yes they did! He was with the CDC. Or was it the CBI? Or..."

"The CCC? The Civilian Conservation Corps?" Tori offered. It was one of the famous alphabet organizations Franklin Roosevelt instituted, after he was elected in 1933, to try to drag the nation out of the Great Depression.

"Yeah! That's it! And after working on the dinosaurs in Rapid City, he got a job with the guys who carved Mount Rushmore!"

Amazed by Cat's relative clarity, Jade nodded, "That's pretty cool, Cat."

"Dinosaurs?" Tori asked.

"There are dinosaur replicas on the hogback ridge that cuts through Rapid City. The ridge circles the Black Hills," Jade explained. Her family had vacationed there when she was little. "If you're on the east side of the ridge, at sunset, you can see the brontosaurus at the top of the ridge backlit by the sun. It's pretty cool.

"Not as cool as a T-rex chowing down on a stegosaurus but..."

"Jade," Tori muttered as she shook her head.

* * *

A few days later, Jade proudly declared, "Dad wasn't full of chiz after all! His great grandfather was a former officer in the Union army during the Civil War and then a Secret Service agent under President Grant."

"Grant who?"

Jade sighed, "Ulysses Grant, Cat. He was _the_ Union Army general then became president of the nation."

"Oh," Cat replied.

"Really? That's so cool!" Tori exclaimed. "He was part of the presidential guard?"

"No. Not that. He was sort of a secret agent in the West. I guess, when the Pinkertons couldn't handle it, the Secret Service filled in. Sort of a version of the FBI - which wasn't formed until after the First World War. My great-great grandfather worked on all sorts of things in the Old West back in the late 1800s."

"Wow Jade! That's really cool," Cat said.

"What was his name?" Tori asked.

"James West," Jade replied. "And no jokes about the last name, please."

The uncharacteristic 'please' caught both Tori and Cat by surprise so they agreed. Tori had to work a little harder since she wanted to make some joke about the Wild West, a humorous play on Jade's name that never occurred to her until they started researching the Old West and their families then.. But she realized she could use the pun on her girlfriend from time to time. Especially those times when Jade was exceptionally mean, rude or simply over-the-top.

Jade went on, "He and his partner, Artemis Gordon, stopped, or at least disrupted, a lot of plots against the government back then. I guess there was a lot of unrest after the War..."

Tori, the history buff, nodded, "Yeah there was. And not just the former Confederate soldiers."

"Dad finally got time to write me a really long email. He also told me about some papers in the safe deposit box at the bank." Jade laughed and said, "I have to weed out a lot of stuff though. The stories sound like steampunk. I mean, gas pellets hidden in boot heels, small grappling hooks fired from Derringers, secret weapons caches in his belt buckle..."

"What's steampunk?" Cat asked.

Also a sci-fi fan, Tori explained, "Steampunk is science fiction about the Victorian Age but with technology that hadn't been invented yet. Like some of the stuff Jules Verne had written about - large submarines and ships to the Moon. There're some really cool stories out there." Tori paused and looked at Jade, "Hey, you know, if some of those stories are any good, we could write them as fiction and see if they could get published."

"What's this 'we', B'wana?" Then Jade looked thoughtful and nodded non-commitally.

Cat suddenly smiled, "Hey! We got our projects done already! YAY!"

"You're right, Cat!" Tori replied.

Jade smiled and at her old friend and said, "Cat, I don't know why everyone says you're so dumb."

* * *

Even though she fulfilled the needs of the report, Tori kept at it. She decided to check on her mother's side of the family. Within a few days, she found out her maternal great-grandfather was a man named Wilton Parmenter back in early the 1900s. Her great grandfather was a minor hero in the First World War as a fighter pilot.

"He lied about his age when he got to France, he was only sixteen. He already had some flight training, which was a lot less intense than it is now. When he got to France, he joined the American volunteers in the Lafayette Escadrille and, after a couple of crackups, actually shot down two German planes. When the U.S. got into the war, he transferred to the 94th Aero Squadron and flew with Eddie Rickenbacker.

"Rickenbacker was the top American ace with sixteen kills. Wilton ended the war with ten kills, including the two he got while with the Escadrille. He probably would've gotten more but..." Tori's voice trailed off.

"But what, Vega?" Jade asked.

"Yeah, Tori. But what?" Cat chimed in.

"Um, he... Uh, he cracked up about six times when he tried to land. One time into the water tower at the aerodrome, knocking it over. And..."

"And?" Jade teased.

"He, um... He wasn't the most coordinated guy I guess. He had to sit out several patrols when he accidentally stabbed himself in the hand with his pen, writing a letter home."

"Oh my God! You inherited his oaf genes!" Jade declared.

"Jade, that's not nice," Cat chastised her childhood friend. "But you aren't the most coordinated person in school, Tori."

"Cat!?" Tori whined.

"Alright, Vega. Fess up. What else did Grandpa Wilton do?"

"He claimed...that he got thrown from his bicycle and broke his arm. And he was cleaning his pistol one afternoon and accidentally shot through the engine block of his plane. Then, when he tried a motorcycle, he hit a barn and..."

Both of her friends were laughing now and Tori, offended at first, gave into the humor and joined them. "My ancestor was such a klutz!"

Jade pulled Tori into her arms, still laughing (which caused her full breasts to rock against Tori, who decided then and there to make her girl laugh more often). "You and your family... Coordination is not your middle name!"

Cat cried out, "Who says I'm dumb?"

* * *

A few weeks later, Tori announced, "I found an earlier set of ancestors! Wilton Parmenter was named for his grandfather who was a cavalry officer after the Civil War. Captain Wilton Parmenter was the post commander at Fort Courage in Kansas. He married a sharpshooter named Jane Angelica Thrift. I have an old tintype of them and they were definitely a cute couple."

"Like us?" Jade teased.

"What do you think?" Tori responded, pulling the tintype out of her saddlebag.

"Well, he's pretty handsome and she is some kinda hot..."

"Jade! That's my great-great-whatever grandmother!"

"Well? She was still hot! But, I think we're hotter!"

"Oh Jade," Tori said, just before kissing the Goth.

"Hey, you guys! I'm here!" Cat yelled, breaking the mini-lovefest. "Thank you!"

"Anyway, this Wilton..."

"Hey!"

"What Cat?! We're not kissing anymore!"

"No Tori. I was wondering if your ancestors met. I meant they were both out west after the Civil War and..."

"You know, Vega, that would be kinda cool."

Tori nodded, "Yeah, it would be cool. Too bad we'll never know...

"Anyway, Wilton was sort of the black sheep of the family. He was a private in the Army of the Potomac but somehow ended up leading a charge against the rebels that eventually led to the end of the war.

"Apparently, the whole family was amazed. He had cousins and brothers in the officer corps. His father, my great-great-great..."

"Enough with the 'greats'!" Jade yelled.

"Okay! Anyway, his father was Thor Parmenter, a general with the Union Army. And Thor's grandfather, Hannibal, was with Washington at Valley Forge."

"Wow! Tori, that is so cool..." Cat said.

"Yeah Vega. That's pretty cool."

"Yeah, I think so. He was also, apparently, a big part of the reason the Hekawis, the local Indian tribe, kept the peace with the cavalry, even as the Indian Wars went on and on..."

"And... Well... Jade, don't say anything please, but Captain Parmenter was kind of a klutz too..."

Jade merely raised an eyebrow.

* * *

The three friends continued to look into their family trees but didn't find much more.

After turning in their reports, along with the rest of the class, they were satisfied with the results.

Several of the reports were read by their authors in Grimes' class, including the three friends.

One of their classmates had an ancestor who, as a member of Andrews Raiders, won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Civil War. He returned to the family farm after the war to live out his days growing corn and wheat.

Another had a family member in Eliot Ness' Untouchables and helped cripple Al Capone's liquor empire before the IRS got Scarface on income tax evasion. After Capone was sent to the Federal Prison in Atlanta and the Volstead Act was revoked, the Untouchables were no longer needed. He went on to work for the Bureau of Investigation (later the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935), retiring after the Second World War with a distinguished record of service.

A third classmate had a grandfather who, as a trained astronaut, was on call as a backup for the members of NASA's Apollo missions. Unfortunately, he never got into space and retired from the Air Force shortly after the manned space flight program was cancelled in 1973. He returned to NASA as a civilian consultant for the beginning of the Shuttle program several years later.

Most of the rest of the class, like Cat, had family involved in the Roosevelt agencies, like the Tennessee Valley Authority or the National Recovery Act or in various capacities in the military during the Second World War. Some classmates, who were excelling in their writing classes, wrote impressive reports about family in the Army, Navy, Marines or the Army Air Force.

Tori and Jade both read their reports. Thanks to their bibliographies, and copies of the data they utilized, got among the highest marks for their report.

The last day of class before Finals Week, Grimes called on them to wait after class.

"I'm very impressed by your reports. But, I have to say, some of this seems pretty out there.

"Tori, your ancestor, um..." He glanced at the report, "Wilton Parmenter? The first one? His story almost sounds like the basis of some wacky Western sitcom.

"And Jade, some of the things attributed to..." Again, a glance at her report, "James West... Well, it sounds pretty fantastic. Almost science fiction."

Jade felt nervous. Was he going to give her a failing grade on her report? He couldn't. It's all true, even if it is pretty incredible.

Seeing the look in her girlfriend's eyes, Tori spoke up, "But, Mr. Grimes, it's all true. We attached copies of our research and..."

"Yes, you did. Based on the research you have in support of the reports, I can't argue but..." Grimes smiled as he shook his head, "Well, all I can say is if you two ever decide to try writing instead of singing or acting, you both have the basis for some interesting books or even screenplays here."

Gratitude for Tori speaking up overwhelmed Jade and, uncharacteristically, she grabbed Tori around the neck and kissed her deeply.

Tori pried Jade's arms from around her neck and scolded, "Please Jade, not in front of the faculty!"


End file.
